


Misunderstandings

by josephina_x



Series: Dimension 46’\>>A [5]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Feral Ford, Gen, One Year Later, Post-Series, Post-Weirdmageddon, See You Next Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 00:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15425403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: Ford and the other Stanley talk, they separate... and then they both fret over what could have been, afraid of exposing what they perceive to be their own failures.





	Misunderstandings

**Author's Note:**

> Fic: Misunderstandings  
> Fandom: Gravity Falls  
> Pairing: n/a  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Spoilers: through the end of the series, and some of the books (Journal #3)  
> Summary: Ford and the other Stanley talk, they separate... and then they both fret over what could have been, afraid of exposing what they perceive to be their own failures.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit.  
> AN: Feral Ford AU! With crossover characters from another AU -- _the madness continues!_ :)

\---

Ford watched the backyard from its reflection in the glass of the windows of the Shack, from where he sat on the porch.

He watched as Stanley slowly shifted that human-looking Bill Cipher of his in his arms.

He watched as Stanley carefully lowered Bill’s slumbering body down to the grassy ground.

He watched as Stanley took his time arranging Bill’s limbs into a position that wouldn’t be too uncomfortable for a human, then slowly removed his light jacket and bundled it up, to carefully place it as a small cushion under Bill’s head.

And he watched as Stanley slowly, painfully pushed himself upright through all the aches of old age, and then made his way across the yard and over to the back porch of the Shack.

He watched Stanley sit down next to him, facing front towards the backyard to watch over Bill -- the opposite direction that Ford was facing, with his own back against the porch railing, face towards the windows.

There was a long moment of silence.

“Please tell me you have a working portal,” were the first words that came out of Stanley’s mouth. “I really need to get home **right now**.”

“I’m sorry, but we don’t,” Ford told him.

“Right, yeah, okay.” Stanley let out a nervous laugh. “You’d, uh, you’d tell me if you did, though. ...right?” was the next strained question.

“Yes,” Ford told him. “But I don’t think it would do you any good, even if it was still functional.” He glanced away and took in a small breath. “I’d never even heard of ‘dimensional sets’ before today.”

He heard Stanley pull in a quick breath.

“-- _Right_ ,” he heard Stanley say shakily. “Right.” He turned his head to watch as Stanley played with his hands nervously. “Guess it’s better to just wait on the kid, then; leave once he’s feeling better, yeah? --Not like he wasn’t trying to get us back already, when we ended up on this, uh, ‘little detour’,” Stanley said with another nervous laugh. “Shouldn’t take too much convincing!”

“Stanley…” Ford sighed, and shifted uneasily in place. “I… don’t know how else to say this, so I will simply say it.” He hesitated as Stanley looked at him. “I have… _very_ good hearing.”

There was a long moment, in which Stanley stilled in place.

Ford watched as this familiar, yet unfamiliar, Stanley turned in place to look at him, dead on.

His eyes were wide. His posture was tense.

He looked anything but happy.

“Don’t kill him,” Stanley said quietly. “I need him to get home.”

“That wasn’t…” Ford stopped. There were so many things wrong with those two statements, he hardly knew where to begin. “I believe I’ve misstepped, somehow,” he tried again. “Stanley, what is Bill to you, precisely?”

Ford watched as Stanley’s body language immediately closed off entirely, and Stanley’s countenance took on a grim expression.

“He’s my kid,” Stanley said, almost doggedly.

Ford adjusted his glasses. “Ah, yes, I’d noticed that,” he said, not entirely certain why his simple seeking question had prompted such a reaction from this Stanley. “But--” He stopped at the shift in the look on Stanley’s face and blinked as he read it and realized…

“Oh,” Ford said, suddenly feeling enlightened. “I take it that your twin did not take your adoption of Bill very well, then,” he said, with a bit of a sympathetic wince. He hadn’t meant to be so very blase about the situation.

Then he felt lost all over again as the look on Stanley’s face shifted to one of total disbelief.

“--I’m sorry,” Ford tried to backtrack abruptly. “I assumed that--” He winced again and tried to explain. “It’s just that from the way that you two interact, I thought-- and you _are_ certainly acting... --ah, well, perhaps not _maternal_ or _paternal_ , exactly...” Ford winced again, because comparing Stanley’s behavior to either of his (...their?...) parents was perhaps not the greatest of ideas. “But... you are certainly **parental** in your behavior towards him? And given his own reactions to you… It’s rather obvious that he’s your child from simple observation,” he noted. “And you did seem to acknowledge that openly just now?” It came out more of a question than he’d intended.

He also felt more than a little concerned when Stanley’s response to his explanation was to turn away from him, place his elbows on his knees, bend forward to grip his head in his hands, and let out a single bark of hysterical-sounding laughter.

“Did I--” Ford shifted nervously in place, not quite hovering at Stanley’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, did I misunderstand you?” he tried. “Did I say something wrong?” He had absolutely no idea how to proceed further.

“No, you… oh, for the love of Paul Bunyan,” Stanley said, his voice taking on an almost strangled tone. “--The problem isn’t you _misunderstanding_ me, it’s… it’s the _opposite_ ,” Stanley ended, and it just left Ford feeling even more confused.

“So… Bill _is_ your child, and you _have_ adopted him?” Ford asked tentatively, to confirm. He saw Stanley nod. “And my understanding this is… a problem?” He watched as Stanley shook his head. “I… don’t understand,” he admitted, still feeling a bit lost.

“My _brother_ doesn’t understand; _you_ get it just fine,” Stanley said, slowly lifting his head and dropping his hands, to stare out across the backyard with a thousand-yard stare. “I tried explaining it to him…” His shoulders slumped, and he tilted his head back to stare up at the sky and let out another short, pained-sounding laugh. “He doesn’t even know about the adoption thing yet; _none_ of them do.” And with that confession, a great deal of fatigue crept back into Stanley’s expression. “I was kinda working my way up to tellin’ ‘em; didn’t even get to do that. Didn’t even tell _the kid_ yet.”

And with that, Stanley glanced over at him with a bit of a glint in his eye and shared a faint smile with Ford, one that lived somewhere on the boundary between rueful and mischievous, a distorted and faded echo of something that reminded him in a vague way of days long past on Glass Shard Beach -- though, if asked, he wouldn’t for the life of him be able to put his finger on why that was so.

“Can’t wait to see the look on the kid’s face when he realizes exactly how much I meant what I said to him,” this Stanley told him. “--So keep that one under your coat for me, yeah?” Then the levity slowly bled out of Stanley’s expression, and he lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck. “I already forged the paperwork for it, and everything,” he told Ford seriously. “Did it before the end of the first week. It’s sitting in a safe in my room in the Shack, back home. --Figured that if I was gonna do this, then I might as well go all-in, yeah?”

“That’s…” Ford paused, internally struggling a little to think of the best words to describe what Stanley had done. “...very brave of you.”

Stanley turned towards him, his expression slowly morphing into surprise, and a little bit of something else. “...Yeah?” Stanley said, getting the faintest of smiles. “--Maybe, maybe not,” Stanley said with a shrug. “I’m thinkin’ the kid might not have as much of a problem with bein’ adopted as all that, though,” Stanley added with a sad smile. “Probably not takin’ my life into my own hands so much as you might think.”

“...Actually, I was referring to your decision to act as a parental figure for him and attempting to correct and forestall his worst behaviors before he does them, not your adoption of him,” Ford said, and quite frankly, he wasn’t entirely sure how Stanley had been able to do it up to this point. But if anyone could find a way to manage to control and compel and corral and maybe, just maybe, otherwise _trick_ Bill Cipher into perhaps _not_ acting on his very worst impulses at _every_ point in time, for at least a _little_ while, in an attempt to keep the rest of them safe... well, it _would_ be some version of his shyster conman of a brother, now, wouldn’t it?

Stanley was staring at him, but Ford wasn’t quite done yet.

“--What you’re trying to do is _also_ remarkably foolish,” Ford felt all-but-compelled to add, “and probably doomed to eventual failure, given that this is _Bill Cipher_ we’re talking about -- especially since it sounds as though yours has also caused a great deal of trouble, and certainly harm, in many other dimensions himself,” and that last part was what made it so foolish to even consider control and reform of him possible, in Ford’s own good opinion. “--But yes, it’s very brave too.”

Stanley was looking incredulous at this point -- and also a bit taken-to-task, and a little bit guilty, of course. But when Ford called him _brave_ for a second time, he let out a soft but hearty laugh and rubbed the back of his neck, grinning, looking but for the world embarrassed.

Stanley glanced away, and his grin turned rueful. “Nah, I’m not… brave or nothin’,” Stanley said. “--I mean, _somebody_ has to take the kid on,” Stanley told him. “Just... figured I ought to do it before I got cold feet or something, is all. Not like _I’ve_ got anything better to do, anyway. Might as well be me,” he muttered out at the end, in what was clearly a thin excuse. He still looked terribly embarrassed at the praise.

 

Ford had a feeling that ‘take the kid on’ was likely the exactly right turn of phrase for it. He didn’t like to imagine what might happen if a teenaged Bill Cipher was left free to his own devices. ...Or if perhaps someone _else_ had gotten a hold of him and decided to try and use him, somehow. Ford couldn’t imagine that _that_ would end well, for _anyone_.

“Still,” said Ford, “I should think it would be rather difficult to keep a watchful eye on Bill Cipher while _also_ handling the Shack tours at the same time, in order to keep him out… of... trouble.” Ford stopped as he realized that… “Is something wrong?”

“Your brother’s still giving tours of the Mystery Shack?”

Ford blinked at him. “Yes,” he said simply. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“Wait,” Stanley said, looking confused and then concerned. “Is there not a Soos around here? --Jesús Ramirez,” Stanley said hurriedly, standing up. “He’s about _this_ tall--” he began, holding up a hand.

“--I know him,” Ford rushed to assure him, standing himself and holding his hands out, palms outwards, “and he’s here. --Well, in Gravity Falls, at least,” Ford corrected himself, “Just not on the premises at _quite_ this moment in time. ...I can’t remember Stan ever letting him give a tour before, though,” he mused, his hands slowly lowering. “I believe he is the, ah, handyman for the Shack?”

“Wait-wait-wait,” Stanley said, shaking his head as he waved his hands back and forth. “Soos is here, but _your brother_ is still running the Mystery Shack?” he asked of him incredulously.

Ford felt his spine stiffen as he suddenly connected a few dots.

“You _aren’t?_ ” he asked of Stanley, and he felt the start of a bad feeling begin to form in the pit of his stomach.

“No,” Stanley said, frowning and sounding concerned. “I handed it over to Soos when…” he trailed off. His face suddenly went expressionless, becoming the face of a near-stranger.

“...Stanley?” Ford said slowly, his hackles beginning to rise. “What’s wrong?”

“You, uh.” He watched Stanley pull in a bracing breath, looking like he was walking on eggshells. Or maybe broken glass. Without proper footwear. “You didn’t… go _sailing_ with him. Out on the ocean. At the end of last summer. After...”

“Sailing?” Ford felt a little faint at the thought. Go sailing? On a boat? With all that water around, none of it drinkable, and no place to hide? No proper land for potentially hundreds and hundreds of miles around, not even within sight? Nothing to forage? Nothing he could do or use to keep him or his brother _safe?_ “I…” He tried to contemplate the thought of doing so, and felt himself shiver uncontrollably. “I… don’t…” Ford tried to get out, but his vision was going spotty and his shivers were turning to stronger tremors because… did Stan want to… go sailing? Had he stopped Stan from-- from _leaving_ \-- before-- when Stan-- _wanted to leave_ \--

“Ford?” he heard, and a hand was reaching towards him.

Ford hunched his shoulders, hissed, and shrank away from-- from--

Ford shuddered and shook his head, trying to clear it of the anxiety that was threatening to overwhelm him. Tried to stop himself from reacting, from _over_ reacting. Because he couldn’t lose it. Not now. Not in front of-- _Please, no!_

“Ford? Ford!”

“Everything all right out here?” Ford heard, and that was--

Ford just leapt for him, and at the soft “oof!” he heard, he felt nothing but relief, because this was his _brother_ , comforting and safe, and easily recognizable to sight and smell and touch, with behaviors familiar and fond, and Stan was hugging him back.

“Hey, hey,” he heard Stan say soothingly, rubbing his back. “What happened?” Stan said a good bit more harshly, and Ford couldn’t help but flinch slightly and let out a soft whine. “--Not mad at _you_ , Ford, just breathe,” Stan said under his breath to him, rubbing circles on his back, and Ford slowly began to relax again in his arms.

\---

Stanley had no idea what was going on.

“I, I was just talkin’ to him,” he told the other him. “We were just talking, and…” He grimaced, because that wasn’t really right. “...I think I brought up something that maybe I shouldn’t have,” he ended, mentally kicking himself all over again.

The other-him glared at him over his brother’s shoulder -- and for good reason, Stanley figured. This Ford had just… backed away and curled in on himself, like he’d been expecting a hit, when he’d brought up the Stan O’ War II. He’d _hissed_ at him! And he’d been shaking his head like… like...

...like _Bill_ sometimes did, when he was trying to get his thoughts back on track, after thinking about Ford and something that had happened back when that deal of theirs had still been on. Like he was trying to wrench something back to the way that things _should_ be for him, after...

Oh, no. Oh, oh _no_.

“...What did that triangle demon _**do**_ to him?” Stanley said, in tones of sheer horror, because what had this other Bill Cipher _done_ to this Ford?!? Because the way this Ford had been acting had seemed a little off to him, sure, but he’d chalked it up to dimensional weirdness or something. But now that he’d started making the comparison of this Ford’s behavior to his Bill-- “ _How long was he stuck in that decaying dimension for?_ ” Stanley demanded, voice rising, because he’d _thought_ there’d been something off with the way that Ford had been acting, with the way he’d been poking at Bill, almost like an animal -- but he’d _thought_ that Ford had been messing with the kid at the _kid’s_ level on purpose! _Not--!_

He realized he’d misstepped yet again when Ford flinched, and the other-him’s glare deepened for a moment to something like rage.

Stanley flinched back in reaction, and his hands came up, open-palmed, in pure self-preservation reflex.

“I just--” Stanley desperately tried to backwheel.

“ _Stop talking_ ,” the other-him said, and Stanley snapped his fool mouth shut, like he probably should’ve done before.

“Ford, c’mon, inside,” the other-him said, and he cajoled and led the other Ford back into the Shack, not quite letting go of him as he did so.

Stanley didn’t exactly miss the death glare the other-him sent him back over his shoulder as he did it, or the shivers it gave him.

Or the way the door slammed shut behind them.

And that left Stanley standing there all by himself, out on the porch. Alone.

Stanley shifted in place, feeling very _out_ of place, all of a sudden.

So he turned around and trudged back over to Bill, where the kid was asleep on the ground out in the open.

He sat down next to him, and he thought.

And he thought.

And he thought.

But all he could come up with, as he sat there dismally and tried to work his way through everything he knew and didn’t know about this place, from what little they’d said and how they all acted, was that it didn’t make sense. It just… didn’t make _sense_.

This Ford and this Stanley hadn't gone sailing together at the end of last summer. But it didn’t seem to be because they hated each other, or because this Ford had kicked the other Stanley out. They both seemed to get along just fine, even with Ford acting a little like a demon sometimes. If anything, it seemed more like they got along _better_ than he and Ford did?

This Ford had seemed freaked out at even the thought of going sailing. But it obviously wasn’t because he didn’t like the idea of being close to his brother, with the way this Ford had been clinging to the other-him, so living in close quarters for a longer period of time probably wouldn’t have been the problem, there. ...Was this Ford afraid of the ocean? (--How had that even worked, with the very first Stan O’ War? ...Hot belgian waffles, _had_ there even been a first Stan O’ War? If not, then what had they done together when they were growing up instead?)

How was _this_ Ford okay with this Stan running the Shack? _His_ brother had hated the very _idea_ of the Mystery Shack. But _this_ Ford acted like the thought of this other-him _not_ running the Shack would be just plain _wrong!_

The folks here had had a Bill Cipher to deal with, and it had sounded from this Ford’s initial freak-out that they’d all managed to kill this Bill Cipher, too -- though apparently this Ford must have gotten tortured a lot worse than his own brother had. So they’d probably had their very own Weirdmageddon, courtesy of their very own triangle demon, at some point, too. But even if this Ford thought this Stan was some kinda hero for helping out with that, somehow, that still _didn’t_ explain the closeness _or_ the protectiveness… _or_ the demon behavior!

The demon behavior, well, maybe this Ford had spent more time in this Bill’s dimension, or maybe he hadn’t been turned to gold in their Weirdmageddon and was exposed to other demons for a lot longer then, or something. Stanley could overlook something like that -- heck, he glossed over it with the kid all the time, and the kid was way worse in some ways -- so maybe this other Stan could do it too, just as easily. But the two of them were a _lot_ closer than he and Ford had been after Stanley had lost his memory -- and Ford had been pretty darn clingy, he’d thought at the time. And this Stan was a lot more protective of this Ford, too. --Not as much as he would be still if what had happened with Ford’s science fair project hadn’t happened, Stanley figured, since this other-him hadn’t come out swinging right out of the gate, but...

When it came right down to it, the only thing Stanley could think of that might explain that closeness...

…was if _this_ Ford had never told _this_ Stan that he wanted his name back, his house back, and him gone at the end of the summer, once the kids had left and Ford no longer needed him as a babysitter for them, to keep them out of his hair. _This_ Ford clearly hadn’t demanded any of that, or wanted ‘no more Mystery Shack junk’ after that, either.

It would explain why this other-him was still here. It would explain why this other-him was still running the Shack. And it would explain why they hadn’t gone sailing. Stanley had long suspected that his brother had only offered up the whole sailing thing to him as a sort of apology for saying what he had about kicking him out, as a kind of compromise for the situation. Ford had still gotten his name and his house back, but instead of leaving him out in the cold, Ford had found an excuse to go off somewhere _with_ him instead. ...And Ford had liked Soos -- everybody liked Soos -- and Soos thought of and treated the Shack a heck of a lot differently than Stanley had. So of course Ford had been okay with Soos continuing it on, so long as Stanley hadn’t had anything more to do with it.

And that way, instead of Stanley going off who-knew-where and Ford losing track of him... by having Stanley sail with him instead, Ford could and had gotten cheap willing labor out of him basically for free, instead of having to pay someone else a living wage to do the same work -- _and_ Ford had also been able to keep an eye on Stanley at the same time, to make sure that Bill Cipher wasn’t coming back.

...Up until Bill Cipher had come back, anyway, and _good riddance_ to him. Ford had had every reason not to be happy with him. Bill was back, which meant that the _one thing_ Stanley had done that had seemed heroic and worthwhile in Ford’s eyes had instead been useless, nothing, a sham. Ford hadn’t liked how Stanley had been handling anything he’d been doing with the kid, since Bill had come back. And the boat trip hadn’t gone all that well, either, as far as Stanley could tell, and Stanley… was no longer useful. In any way. To him.

It made Stanley feel sick. It made Stanley feel sick, because maybe _this_ Stanley had completed the circle, instead of getting his mind erased, and helped gotten rid of their Bill for good. Done something right, for once in his life. --Or, even if that hadn’t happened, maybe _this_ Stanley had somehow made up with this Ford…

...except that seemed all but impossible, given the circumstances. When Stanley had finally managed to _do something_ and had gotten his brother back, Ford had been spitting _mad_ coming out of that portal, absolutely furious. And that just made that sick feeling Stanley had in the pit of his stomach feel even worse. Because the only reason Stanley could think of that would have had Ford _not_ being upset with him like that, for trying to burn his journal and fighting with him and pushing him in, and then panicking and trying to help him out and spending thirty years of his life bringing him back…

...would be if he’d never been the one to push Ford into the portal in the first place. If maybe, instead, _this_ Stanley had seen this Ford go through -- enough to realize what was going on and what he’d need to do to get him _back_ \-- but _without_ him having been the one to push this Ford in, accidentally. Without it having been yet another mistake. If it hadn’t been this Stanley’s fault that this Ford had gone through the portal… then maybe that would explain it. Here, it must have really been a complete accident.

Or if it hadn’t been an accident, then maybe it had only happened because of their other Bill, somehow.

It left Stanley in the bad position of being very, _very_ shakily grateful that the kid had called what had happened with the portal an accident, when this Ford had been overhearing the two of them talking, while listening in. It left Stanley feeling both sick and grateful at the same time, that the way the kid had phrased things had made it sound as if Stanley had had nothing to do with it.

Because if this Ford realized what he had done...

Maybe this Ford was okay with getting along with the kid, even knowing he was _a_ Bill Cipher, but… Stanley wasn't Bill. Stanley was Stanley, and Bill was Bill. When it came to Bill Cipher… well, the expectations were very different there, for a reason. For many, _many_ reasons.

And Stanley had a feeling -- a very very _bad_ feeling -- that while maybe this Ford might be willing to give this Bill a second chance, maybe this Ford wouldn't be nearly so forgiving of _him_ , and what _he’d_ done. His own _brother_ sure hadn’t, and _Ford_ had been the one getting rescued. _This_ Ford wouldn’t have the least bit of gratitude cluttering up his thinking space on Stanley’s behalf, and Stanley doubted that this Ford had any kids around that needed babysitting in the meantime to provide any sort of excuse for him to maybe stick around for awhile. Besides, that other Stanley was around to be able to handle things if a watcher for the kids was needed. --Heck, neither Dipper or Mabel had come up even once in any of their conversations yet. Were they even here this summer?

...Oh geez, did the kids even _exist_ in this dimension?

Stanley wrapped his arms around his middle. He literally felt _sick to his stomach_ at the thought of the kids not...

\---

“’m s-sorry, ’m s-s-s-sorry!” were the first words Ford managed to blurt out, once they were inside and seated down on the floor. And at hearing the desperate animalistic whine underscoring his brother’s tone as he said it, Stan felt a surge of anger, and he forcibly had to stifle the urge to get up, turn around, go _right back_ outside, and beat the _stuffing_ out of that _**lousy** , no good_\--

Because Ford was clinging to him in obvious distress, and Ford came first.

“Ford, it’s okay,” Stan told his brother, as Ford clung to him.

“N-no, no, no it isn’t,” Ford said, ducking his head and he looked like he was about to _cry_ \-- and here he’d been more worried about the human-looking triangle! “I-- I--”

“Okay,” Stan told his brother, barely hanging onto his patience by his fingernails. “You wanna let go of me, then, so I can go out there and stomp that jerk right into the mud--”

“NO!” Ford yelled out, grabbing onto him even harder.

“...” Stan blinked at his brother. “Welp, now I am just confused,” he told Ford. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

To that, he got a whimper out of his brother.

“Ford, I’m not mad,” he told his brother. “I’m not mad, and I’m not gonna be mad unless you want me to be.” It was more of a question, and from the flinch he felt, he had a pretty good idea that this was something Ford thought that… “I’m not gonna be angry with you about whatever, okay? Pretty sure the other guy isn’t, either,” though he had a feeling that he was definitely gonna have to read this other ‘Stan’ the riot act, and maybe clue him in a bit on the kinds’a stuff he should and absolutely should **not** say to or around his brother. He shouldn’t go setting off his brother like that, and acting all mad at the demonic triangle for thinking Ford’s behavior was off was… well, getting angry at the dead demon for having treated his brother _badly_ was fine, but there wasn’t anything _wrong_ with Ford, and if that lousy idiot thought that there was--!

“I’m s-sorry,” Ford murmured out, hunching his shoulders, and at that, Stan let out a sigh.

“Ford, what the heck do you think you need to be apologizin’ to _me_ for?” he said, because if Ford wasn’t mad at the other guy, and he’d been talking to him, and he was apologizing to _him_... then that pretty much narrowed it down to something that had-or-hadn’t happened to this other guy that hadn’t-or-had happened to Stan, because of this other guy’s brother doing something different. “You wanna clue me in here?” he asked about as gently as he possibly could, as he continued to rub circles on his brother’s back.

He felt Ford shiver in his arms, then shiver again. He felt Ford tense. He heard his brother take in a breath.

But everything went quiet for awhile when Ford finally said, “Sail-ing.”

Stan contemplated this.

“Uh, Ford,” he said. “I have absolutely no idea what sailing has to do with anything.” He frowned slightly, and then he realized... “Wait. Did you want to go out on the lake or…? _\--Okay, **nevermind** then!_ ” he said immediately, as he felt Ford tremble in his arms and a small whimper escape him. “It’s fine,” Stan said, patting Ford on the back gently, trying to calm him down. “No sailing for you. That’s fine.”

“But y-you want to.”

“Huh?” said Stan, looking down at his brother. “Uh. Maybe? --I mean, not right _now_. Obviously.” Going out in the rowboat was okay and all sometimes on his off-days during the summer, when the Shack was closed, but he hadn’t really been feeling it lately. Heck, he hadn’t really been feeling it for a long, long time. He’d been too busy with the portal and going fishing out on his own had felt… well, he’d only really done it when he’d felt like he’d lose his mind if he didn’t get away from everything for half-a-day or so. And after he’d gotten Ford back, sticking close to the Shack had just been… well, easier?

“But you want to do it,” Ford said, and his voice was wavering something fierce.

“Ford…” Stan began. “--Is this a trick question?” he asked. “I mean, if you want to go out to the lake, we can, and I can pull out the old boat, sure. Maybe stick close to the shore?”

Ford just hugged him that much tighter, almost like he thought Stan was going to disappear on him. And that just wasn’t okay.

So Stan made an executive decision.

“Ford, you’re shaking like a leaf just thinkin’ about it.” Though he wasn’t really sure _why_ , he wasn’t about to push Ford on it, that was for sure. “We’re _not_ going sailing,” he told his brother. “Why would you even _say_ that when you…” Stan trailed off, then his eyes narrowed. “This _other_ guy. He said somethin’ to you about sailing.”

“He’s not broken,” Ford said.

“Uh, what? You lost me.” Serious conversational whiplash. Was he talking about the _Bill?_ Or… the other _Stanley?_ Stan felt uneasy all of a sudden.

“The other… _me_ ,” Ford said quietly. “He’s not broken.”

Stan froze in place, any previous thoughts completely derailed and brought to a halt by those words.

“I’m gonna kill him,” Stan said, dead-serious, as he started to stand up, to go after that stupid sonofa--

He dropped right back down as Ford grabbed him and dragged him down with his full weight, like he was never letting go. ...No, like he was _afraid_ to let go.

“Ford, let _go_ ,” he told his brother, struggling with him. “I don’t _care_ if that jerk looks like me, he **cannot** _talk_ to you like that!”

“He didn’t!” Ford blurted out, right as Stan had almost broken away from him, and it left Stan frozen in place, thinking a shocked ‘ _what???_ ’

Ford tackled him again in the interim, of course, but _this_ time, Stan grabbed him right back to hug Ford to him tightly, and his brother let out a surprised hiccuping noise in an outbreath of air.

“ _ **You are not broken**_ ,” Stan ground out at him, hugging his brother close. “And if you ever say that again, I am gonna have to try and punch you in the face for talkin’ about my brother like that, and that is _not_ gonna go well. So don’t do that again.”

He felt Ford shiver and let out a sound that wasn't quite a laugh, arms wrapped around him, head buried in his chest.

“I want to know what that jerk said to you to make you think that,” Stan told him firmly, because there was no way Ford could have gotten there on his own. Not with what Stan had heard out of the triangle. “Right. _now_.”

“He s-said that he wasn’t running the Mystery Shack anymore,” Ford said shakily, and it threw Stan for a loop.’ _What?!?_ ’ Stan thought, because _what??_

“--Wait. How did this even come up?” Stan interrupted quickly, and he began frowning. Because what the heck did running the Shack have to do with anything, anyway?

“I-- I brought up how I thought Bill must be a handful to watch, when he had to give tours, too,” Ford said, “and he…” Ford swallowed hard.

“...He got all confused,” Stan ended. “Okay. What else did he say.”

“He said that Soos was running the Shack now. Your... handyman?” Stan couldn’t help but wince at hearing that, because the kid was okay as a handyman, sure, but at soaking tourists for all they were worth? Not in a million lifetimes. “That he handed it over to Soos when they… when they went… _sailing_. At the end of last summer, after…” Ford paused for a moment, “what I presume was their Weirdmageddon, though he didn’t say it outright,” Ford chattered out the last quickly. And Stan understood Ford’s short hesitation before saying that last part, because that meant that some things… just didn’t line up the same. _At all._

 

For one thing, they’d had _their_ Weirdmageddon at the end of _this_ summer, almost three months ago. And boy howdy, had it _not_ been pretty. Stan had pretty much all of his memories back _now_ , but it had been a long, slow grind, the last couple of months. Thankfully, he was pretty much back to his old self, now. --Even _more_ thankfully, they’d managed to convince the kids’ parents to let the niblings come up for Thanksgiving this year, while their school was out, on their vacation days -- though that meant they wouldn’t be getting the kids for winter break again like last year. --Not without a lot of leverage, in the form of blackmail material that Stan just didn’t have, to use, anyway. So a December visit from the kids was out, barring an actual kidnapping or something, and _that_ probably wasn’t a good idea.

“Okay?” said Stan. “I mean, I don’t see why he’d need to hand the -- whole thing? -- over to Soos just to get a couple of days out on the lake…”

He heard Ford gulp before he took in a shallow breath and said, “Not the lake.”

Stan blinked. And then his mind went a little blank as the idea crashed into his head like a freight train -- or, more like, beached itself onto its shores like the old _Stan O’ War_ itself.

His eyes went wide, and he barely heard Ford confirm what he was thinking as Ford finished it off with, “Out on the ocean, together.”

“They went _sailing_ together?” Stan said, feeling almost completely overwhelmed. “ _Sailing_ sailing?” And all he could think of to say next was to blurt out, “ _\--How?!_ I, I mean-- they’d need a _boat_ for that! --A _real_ boat,” he said to his brother, and what little amount of joy might have tried to briefly flare up at the thought of _sailing with his brother_ , even in a secondhand vicarious way of hearing about other them-s doing it in another world? --Died almost instantaneously as the truth of cold hard reality set in. Because those other them-s would have needed a real boat for that, not just a little rowboat or a small dinghy, and… “Those cost money,” hard-earned cash. “And then there’s the supplies... and the fuel...” His head spun at the thought, because he didn’t have that kinda scratch just lying around! --Sure, he still had some of the gold left from the stash Mabel had grabbed after that thing with the unicorns, but he’d used most of that on the camper, and repairs to the Shack, and… _more_ repairs to the Shack after Weirdmageddon. “When would they have even found the time to do it?” because even going out and _finding_ a boat to buy would’ve been a big issue, taken a huge chunk of time.

Yes, the Shack had been closed for a couple months in the meantime, but that had been while he’d been recovering -- _because_ he’d been recovering. His memory had been completely shot. He’d really only been feeling like himself again the last couple of weeks, and... he hadn’t been running the Shack and making any money at all during that stretch; all they’d been doing was spending it like water. He’d only just started doing tours again last week!

...Besides, even if he _did_ manage to come across some huge windfall of money, or otherwise scrape enough together for a boat to rival the Stan O’ War, _and_ the supplies, _and_ whatever else they might need for fueling and refueling and… _everything else_... “Ford, even if we got ourselves a boat, you can’t even _think_ about getting out on the water of the _lake_ without--” looking like he was about to have a full-on panic attack, let alone the ocean.

“There’s just no way.” Stan shook his head. Just… "Are you sure you heard the guy right? I mean, how would they even do it?! Ford -- even if this other-you didn’t have a problem with it, this other-you would have had to start looking right away for a boat, while that other guy was still recovering…” Not only would this other Ford have to not have a problem with the idea of going out sailing, unlike his brother, but… “They couldn’t go out sailing right away while this other me was having memory issues. That makes no sense--” Stan pulled in a breath suddenly, “ _Oh…_ ” because the sudden realization left him reeling.

Stan lifted a hand to his face, to cover his eyes.

“Stanley…” he heard his brother say quietly.

He felt Ford jolt when he began to chuckle, then tense when he began to cackle out laughter. He couldn’t help it, though.

He couldn’t help but laugh at it all, and he knew Ford must be looking at him with confusion. But he felt Ford began to relax again when he dropped his hand and his brother really got a good look at his expression.

“Hey, Poindexter,” Stan grinned down at his brother, ruffling his hair. “Somethin’ to be said for takin’ the long way around, right?” He chuckled again. “So we didn’t use the circle. So what? At least _our_ demonic triangle ain’t coming back like _theirs_ did! Heh.”

He felt Ford jolt in surprise in his arms, then watched Ford flush and duck his head, looking both embarrassed and guilty.

“Hey, hey, none of that,” he told his brother, patting him on the shoulder. Maybe his brother had been too turned around and messed up by the triangle demon to calm down quickly enough to have been thinking clearly enough to think of the zodiac fast enough for them to use it, but that hadn’t been his fault; it was Bill’s. They hadn’t had time to escape and pull off the circle before the triangle had floated back into the pyramid, before Ford had lost it at the sight of Bill all over again and tried to attack him -- but Ford had only been halfway through trying to paint the circle on the floor when Bill had returned, so another minute or two probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference either way. And really, all things considered... “I’m fine, you’re fine. The kids are fine. That’s all that matters. Right?”

“...Right,” his brother said softly, hugging him a little more closely to him.

“Right,” Stan said firmly.

“But Stan…” Ford began cautiously, and Stan stifled a sigh, waiting patiently for the next thing that was bothering his brother. “I’m holding you back.”

Stan stared down at his brother blankly, and said, “I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.” At the wince his brother got, Stan sighed and said, “ _Ford._ I have been bumbling about this stupid house--”

“Shack.”

“--yes, Shack, you know what I mean -- I’ve been a complete mess for the last _three months_ ,” he reminded Ford, feeling a little ashamed about it as he did so. “And you have been taking care of me this entire time.” Because who had been holding who back here? “If anybody’s been holding anybody else back, it’s _me_ , holding back _you_ ,” Stan admitted, feeling not so great at the thought. “I’m surprised you put up with me at _all_ , especially those first couple of weeks, let alone--”

“No!” Ford said, shoving himself upright, to grab his shoulders. “I-- I haven’t been _putting up_ with you, Stan. You’re-- I--” He looked a bit frantic as he said, “I-If you want to leave--”

“Woah!” Stan said, eyes going wide in panic. “Who said anything about leaving! _I_ don’t want to leave! Where would I even go?” Stan said, and then _he_ started to feel a little frantic himself, because where _would_ he go? And, wait, did Ford bringing it up mean that... “Uh. I, uh. I mean. Do… do you…” He swallowed hard. He had to say it, though. ‘ _Suck it up, Stan._ ’ “Do you _want_ me to lea--?”

“NO!” Ford grabbed him up in a hug and held him so tightly that Stan lost his breath for a moment. “Don’t go. Don’t go! Please!” Ford said, butting his head against Stan’s chest, and the scared whine underlying his voice was back. “ _Please_.”

“G-geez,” Stan said, letting out a nervous breath and trying not to shake in relief, as he hugged his brother right back. “Not going anywhere, Poindexter. Can’t get rid of me _that_ easily,” he said with an unsteady laugh, a little freaked out at how close he’d just come to leaving, all because of a stupid _misunderstanding_. “I mean, I’m the one outta the two of us runnin’ the Shack, in the first place,” he chuffed out, picking up steam. “I’ll _fight_ you for it. You’ll have to _throw_ me out the-- door--” he said, and then he squeezed his eyes shut and shuddered slightly, as a few more wisps of memory clicked into place. “Uh, no, w-wait -- bad example. _Bad example._ \--Forget I said that!” he blurted out quickly, as he felt Ford hang on to him even more tightly, and shudder himself with a high-pitched whine.

They both sat on the floor of the Shack, hugging each other for a couple minutes, trying to breathe a little easier and calm the heck down. Not that Stan was timing them or anything. They got there when they got there.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” he heard his brother say after a long while. “I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s fine,” Stan said, still a little more shakily than he’d like. “Whatever. We get worked up? We calm back down. This time, it was just at the same time. That happens sometimes! It’s fine. Right?”

Ford pulled in a slow breath, and let it out just as slowly.

“Right,” Stan said. “Everything’s fine.” He ‘ahem’-ed to clear his throat. “We’re both fine, and nobody’s going anywhere. Right?” he tried again. This time, he felt Ford make a headnod. “Good.”

Then he felt Ford shake his head once, and he tried not to tense in place. “Uh, what?” he said. “Somebody’s going somewhere?” he added with a strained chuckle, trying for levity.

“They’re leaving.”

Stan remembered how to breathe again. “Right. Sure.”

“We need to make them to stay,” Ford said with a quiet, scary intensity, and Stan let out an abbreviated wheezing laugh, because…

“What?” Stan looked down at his brother in confusion. “Are you serious?”

“Yes,” Ford said simply.

“Uh, okay. Now you’ve _really_ lost me,” Stan told him, especially after how badly this other guy had wound his brother up without even trying. Why would Ford want that guy to stick around? Let alone the other Bill? -- _Any_ Bill Cipher?

And then Stan got that ‘oh no’ feeling he usually got, as his brother slowly pulled away from him to sit upright on his own, and he saw the expression on Ford’s face. Because the last time he’d seen his brother looking so darn stubborn… oh, geez.

“Ford… you maybe wanna explain this one?” he tried, hoping he could talk him around for once. “We don’t like the triangle, right? And the guy’s got things handled. Right? They’re all buddy-buddy. It’s fine. Just… let ‘em get themselves out of our hair, and out of our dimension and whatever, for good. Right?”

“It’s _not_ fine, Stan,” said Ford, and Stan had to stifle a groan.

“ _Please_ tell me you are not on some vendetta to kill every triangle we meet,” Stan said.

“No!” Ford said, seeming shocked at the idea. “Stan -- we need to help them!”

There was a long beat of silence.

“Ford,” Stan said with as much gentle patience as he could muster just then -- which, he had to say, was not a heck of a lot. “Have you lost your mind?”

Ford rubbed at his eyes under his glasses. “I meant help Stanley, Stan.”

“Yeah, _that’s_ get both old and confusing really quick,” Stan quipped dourly.

“ _Stan._ ”

“ _Ford._ ” Stan let out a breath. “Have you lost your mind?”

His brother stubbornly firmed his jaw and looked him straight in the eye.

“Where’s his brother, Stan?” Ford said quietly.

Stan paused for a moment. “...Did you hear either of them _say_ where he is?” he asked, because of the two of them, his brother wasn’t the one who needed a hearing aid -- not by a long shot -- and there was no way that Ford hadn’t stalked the hell out of the two of them during every waking minute since they’d got here, gathering information any way he could on a pair of potential threats.

“Back in their home dimension,” Ford replied promptly.

“Okay. Then why are you askin’ _me_ when you already know the answer,” Stan said peevishly, crossing his arms.

“Because I want you to think about it, because I desperately need a second opinion beyond my own,” Ford told him, and Stan sighed, because darn his brother sometimes. ...Though at least his brother had to be feeling better, what with all the deep quiet breathing and him all talking like a nerd again. “Under what circumstances would I be okay with you running off with Bill Cipher, to other dimensions not our own, all by yourself, and _not_ come with you?”

Stan let out a snort, because that one wasn’t hard at all. “Well, if I was trying to get him away from you--”

“--I wouldn’t let Bill trying to kill me stop me from coming with you,” Ford said quietly.

“Okay,” Stan said, scratching the back of his neck. “So maybe it’s the other way around, instead? That guy’s Ford trying to kill that Bill?” he tried spitballing. “Or--” He stopped when his brother went pale. “What.”

“That… actually fits better,” Ford said quietly, and Stan saw his brother’s mind racing through implications, burning through synapses and who-knew-what-else along the way. “Bill and Stanley seem to get along. If Bill was trying to kill this other Ford, he would be trying to get back there and Stanley would _not_ be getting along with him, from what I gather from how Stanley talked about his brother on the porch,” he told Stan. “But if this other Ford is trying to kill Bill, and Bill _isn’t_ trying to kill him… it would explain why Stanley had to _persuade_ Bill to try and take them back to his dimension, and why the two of them don’t seem to be at great odds with each other on the whole, either.” Ford looked at him, waiting.

“Okay,” Stan said slowly. “So… this other me isn’t trying to help kill Cipher, he’s doing the opposite,” Stan put together. “That seems like a bad idea.”

“...Is it?” Ford said. He looked up at Stan. “He’s apparently already died once, and come back. Who’s to say he wouldn’t again?” and at that Stan winced. “...In an even worse mood?” Ford continued, and Stan waved him off.

“Okay, okay, I think I maybe see where you’re going with this,” Stan told his brother, but boy, did he wish he didn’t. “So, what, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?” he asked Ford, pulling a face. “I thought these other us’es actually did beat him, though.” It had sure sounded like they had, from the way that Bill had been ranting about everything when they’d first shown up. “Why would this other me decide to join him, instead of just beating him again?”

“...Is that really what happened, though?” Ford murmured with a frown, focusing down on his hands. “Perhaps it’s the other way around.”

Stan snorted. “You’re kidding. You think this Bill Cipher decided to ‘join’ that other-me?" Was his brother serious?

But yeah, it looked like he was. Ford still had his thinking frown going on. “Bill seems to defer to this Stanley quite consistently,” Ford told him. He looked up at Stan. “Stanley treats Bill like a child, and this Bill Cipher seems to act like a child in response to such treatment.”

“Well, _that_ sounds like a really smart thing to do,” Stan said sarcastically of the other guy, but he stopped when he saw Ford almost respond, but then hesitate for a moment.

“I… told him that it was both brave and foolish,” Ford said slowly. “He…” Ford raised his head, and now he looked _worried_. “Stan,” he said, “Some of the things he said… it wasn’t just _what_ he said, it was _how_ he said it.” And Ford was looking more and more pale as he spoke, his body going more and more still. “He wasn’t repeating himself. He was saying things like it was the first time he’d ever said them out loud. The first time he’d told anyone.” Ford’s eyes drifted off to the side. Definitely worried.

“Okay,” Stan said. “So the guy was oversharing. And?”

Ford’s eyes moved back to Stan. “And some of the things he was telling me were the kinds of things that he _should_ have been sharing with his own brother. He _should_ have shared them with _him_. ...So why didn’t he?”

It was a rhetorical question they both knew the answer to, but Stan answered it anyway, with a growing bad feeling in his gut: “Because his brother didn’t want to hear it.”

Stan looked at Ford.

Ford looked at Stan.

“He’s in trouble, isn’t he?” Ford said quietly.

Stan ran a hand across his face. He grimaced. Because if this guy’s own Ford wasn’t on board with what he was doing...

He looked back up at his brother, and said something that had been on his mind, tumbling around the back of his brain -- something that had been bugging the hell out of him, that he had tried to wave away as unimportant, but now… “He’s in a lot worse than that.” At Ford’s sudden tension, he said slowly, “Ford, maybe those portals aren’t big enough to drive the Stanleymobile through, but even if I had to flee the Shack in the dead of night, I’d still be able to grab a go-bag of food, stuff a duffle full of clothes, _something_.” He was frowning as he looked up at his brother. “All either of those two had on ‘em when they came through that thing were the clothes on their backs.” Maybe they’d done just that, and just lost what they’d had on them in the shuffle, but either way…

Something was really wrong there.

The way Ford was looking at him now was as grim as he felt.

“He needs help,” Ford said.

“Yeah,” Stan agreed dourly, then let out a huff of breath. “--But does it really have to be _us?_ ” he groused.

“If his brother won’t help,” Ford asked quietly, “Who will?”

Stan didn’t have an answer for that.

“We should probably actually go talk to them, make sure we’re not just jumping off the deep end, here,” Stan told his brother. “Could be we’re just thinking up a bunch of wrong things that don’t have anything to do with anything.” He got his feet under him and pushed off of his knees with a groan as he got himself upright.

His brother rolled to his feet a good bit more easily than he did. He also looked a little bit embarrassed. “That’s probably wise,” Ford allowed.

“Wise? Heh. Don’t go too crazy on me, now, Ford,” he told his brother. “Pretty sure I’ll end up with a big head, or somethin’!”

Ford smiled.

“Probably should call the Corduroys first, though. Tell the kids they need to stay over a bit longer, let ‘em know what’s going on,” Stan added with a tired sigh.

Ford lost his smile.

\---


End file.
